Together We Brought the Moon Down
by Aloice
Summary: A character study based on the XIII cast's full ATB skills, ft. Valhalla!Lightning, Nautilus!Sazh, and LR everyone else. Originally inspired by a tumblr gifset by casdaine (?) Cross-posted on AO3.
1. Army of One

**Army of One**

( nier automata | alien manifestation [vocals] )

* * *

In her dream, she approaches the goddess' crystal throne, and she crystallizes with it: frozen in twenty-one years of age, frozen as the rebel soldier who has brought the moon down, frozen with her beauty her sin her redemption and her hubris. She walks with the eternal youth and loneliness of one giving up on the world in order to save it. She raises her proud head, walks out as she kisses the inert dead air – then soars above the winds, an army of one.

* * *

 _How much longer_? Lightning Farron wonders

Dimly, fallen again cracked and bleeding from the cliffs of time-worn and polished Valhalla

Marble, pale green and iridescent as the millions of human lives entangled in timelines

Flashing past searing eyelids. In those barely discernable dreams she can never touch

Breathes her sister, her adopted human family, the partner-child she can't watch growing up

And the pilot-father she can't witness growing old.

The dragon adorned in pulsing ruby and luminous garnet hunts the tips of her gloved fingers

With spite and hellfire, a murderous rage left brewing for thousands of human life cycles,

And she has to put a stop to it. She _will_ put a stop to it.

 _How much longer_? Lightning Farron repeats

With conviction, and with every unchanging hour and year

(except the invisible scars and loss of joy and memory that accumulate under her skin)

The answer becomes more and more clear.

(She ceases to dream about forever as she learns to charge immortality over and over.)

* * *

"You cannot defeat me," Caius states as one immersed in the full weight of chaos and unrelenting fate, unflinching dark steel and tumultuous violet eyes. "You are one and divine. I am human and many. How can your loyalty to something so distant and abstract defeat my love for every single Yeul that's ever existed?"

In Valhalla he always has a new body to bury.

In Valhalla she always sends her one visitor away.

* * *

When the same cascade of snow-white feathers constantly strays its color by the same pool of heroine blood,

Every day is a swansong.

* * *

Etro has no court; no ladies-in-waiting, no officers or generals, no lovers or family. The chant goes: _Come, pity poor Etro, she is left all alone_. _Her blood pouring forth, in Chaos to atone. Queen of nothing, goddess of death — so let her be known._

She waits under the pure glowing rays of the temple, quietly pacing in the courtyard, guarding that which is invisible and untouchable. The goddess exists in repose; the knight remains en garde, her blade illuminated by – in equal amounts – her overlord's authority and obstinate will.

(Lightning Farron hasn't felt like Lightning Farron for a very long time.)

 _Come, pity poor Lightning, she's chosen to be all alone. Her blood pouring forth, battling chaos to atone. Knight of faith, goddess of loss – so let her be known._

* * *

 _Let me fight_ , she prays in tears she does not feel rolling down her numb face, _let me make up for everything._

The grace that touches her diminishes her, turns her name into Light from Lightning. A symbol. It's enough for her. It's enough for her, twenty-one and relieved and oblivious, taking her sister into her arms without realizing the destruction of one third of cocoon. It's enough for her, she who has forced a child onto the ground instead of allowing him to pity the dead. If she can be anything other than destruction, any force to protect and serve at all, she'd fight for it.

 _But would you fight for a thousand years?_ Comes the inquiry, wordless and emotionless, almost a reflection on water. _This is dedication without reward or end. You will bruise. You could lose. We might all inevitably perish, even if it would be at the end of days._

She nods.

 _I'd fight for a million._

( _I'd fight for anyone and everyone that is not me_.)

* * *

 _Promise that you'll remember me._

The actual crystallization feels like falling back asleep. Or has she ever been awake in the first place? Sacrifice. Pretense. A goddess' lifetime in Valhalla and it all cracks and falls into pitiable pieces when she cries out for a fragment of her human heart. _Pathetic. Meaningless. Unforgivable._

 _What's an army of one in a war that cannot be won?_

(Serah's verdict, left to drift and echo through the historia crux even as Lightning descends into a perpetual slumber not unlike death: _everything_.)


	2. Sovereign Fist

**Sovereign Fist**

( nier automata | a beautiful song [opera boss theme])

* * *

Neon lights, lacquer mask, masquerade dress: the world that is hinges on love in stupor, and everyone dances to deny. He's no Olga or Berdy, gifted with song or words, born to entertain; he's also no Lightning or Hope, capable of leading an entire world through thick and thin, stand tall at the helm when all appears lost and only a voice of resolute determination can turn the tide. No; he is Snow Villiers, the self-proclaimed hero who had stood helplessly as he watched this mighty world fall into a husk of what it once was, and tonight, he will oversee its _celebration_.

* * *

The construction of the Patron's Palace had been a lavish affair, made so because he had willed it so. If the people still harbored a spark of affection for him – a spark for anything at all – he was going to milk it, damn it. The loss of the old commercial district had hit Yusnaan hard, and with the rumors that people had been throwing themselves into chaos infusions… well, the more people he could bring under his watchful eyes, the better.

The workers had built the cell to his specifications, gotten all flushed and tipsy from the taste of the new wine from the Wildlands, and departed. He can still hear their ghosts here, near-drunken and laughing, cracking a joke or two about the kind of slaughterhouse beast that must inevitably end up in such a destitute place. Most of them had died to human error in a fireworks warehouse explosion. What else? The chaos is still eating people. Plague epidemics have once again become endemic in the cities. He'll see to a property dispute in the morning, before attending a dessert-tasting reception.

He locks himself in, climbs onto the broken bed, turns the betrothal necklace in his calloused hands thirteen times, and falls asleep.

* * *

"Don't go," he warns, raw-throated and exhausted and… afraid. It's the dead of night in the middle of winter, and they are standing opposite each other on the top of an abandoned building in Yusnaan. The realization of fear in his system shocks him, paralyzes him more than even the fear itself. _He shouldn't be here. He should be back at the infirmary, with me, recovering_. "You are not yourself, Hope."

The silver-haired man turns, as if in a daze. The scientist's dark boots are lingering just a few too inches too close to the edge. Under the faint light reflected by the star Hope Estheim has built, there are pale snowflakes in his hair and roses in his eyes. Snow reaches out in desperation, tries to seize his friend's arm, ready to knock him out with his fists if he has to – and finds only air.

"Damn it, Hope, don't leave me now!"

Nothing. He dashes forward and finds himself staring down wildly from the edge of the roof. A pristine field of snow. No PSICOM airships or boxes to break the fall. There's not even a collapsed figure on the ground. It's as if… Hope has simply vanished into the air.

How long has it been? How many years has it been since the cathedral was raised in Luxerion? What had Hope said to him the last time they met, and did he act strangely then? What if he had just forced Hope to –

"Serah," he whispers, clutching the sphere of their lost world in his palm and weeping after the final person he's lost to the wind, "I didn't learn anything at all from losing you, did I?"

The streets of Yusnaan are empty. For some reason, he knows he's not in a doomed timeline.

* * *

The chaos infusion howls after his blood, drinks away his magic for play. He laughs with the one in the Palace, the rift so large that he had to commission an entire citadel to contain it; every day it would dance with him – every day it would eat a guard and half of his magic – and he binds it amid grunts and pants behind closed doors and painted-over windows, marveling at the corruption of the world growing with the pointy end of his l'Cie arrows.

 _Why don't you give in?_ He thinks he hears it hiss sometimes, as he narrowly dodges the down-swinging mace of a horrendously disfigured cyclops. _Why do you, a patron, deny me my feast?_

He laughs, a humorless sound. That's one way to bring it all back. Noel standing right next to him as they guarded Pandaemonium's supplies, Hope smiling down gratefully at the two of them from a balcony – "I SAID, STAND IN LINE AND WAIT FOR YOUR TURN!"

* * *

 _This is… my city to protect._

 _My people._

 _A thousand spiked icicles in my heart that refuse to thaw…_

* * *

Sazh: gone for what feels like hundreds of years, hasn't really seen him for a thousand. Noel: still mumbling and apologizing every day for committing his "great sin," hiding in the Warren and refusing to tell others his name. Vanille and Fang: still frozen in their crystal, and likely will stay frozen until the end of the world. And then there is…

No, there _was_ Hope and the sisters the two of them had loved…

How much can one man do?

How much can one soul will for?

The sovereign fist unlocks rusted-over doors and clears the space of monsters. Smiling and healing his wounds clean, he leans down to pick up the soul seeds before handing them to one of the guards. "Now don't let those fall into the hands of one of those _seed traders_ , you hear me?"

"Want another drink, Sire?"

"Don't tell me your brother's restaurant is _still_ struggling?"

"It… it still is, Sire."

"Tell him I'm coming over tomorrow evening, and tell him to change the name to _Banquet of the Lord_."

* * *

When the stars align and the feast is at its most magnificent, the Patron would tell old world stories. No one knows how much he exaggerates; he'd speak of Fal'Cie bigger than Cocoon itself, a l'Cie woman who spent dozens if not hundreds of years serving the goddess Etro in Valhalla, the glittering golden murals of the dream city of Nautilus, and airships full of glorious white-clad generals from the Cavalry. He'd laugh about these things with liquid eyes and amidst festival frost, and the immortal children would all jump up and down, tell him with those pretend-innocent voices that they have to hear it again. Some women would berate the Patron for being single and try to lure him into a dance, only for him to become somber and say, no more stories if they are gonna force his hand. So they would stop. And then they would make up fantasy romantic stories about the daughters of the goddess instead. And the Patron says yes, he's sure _those_ two would enjoy it, he just hopes that they would hear those silly things for themselves one day.

* * *

 _Don't you know?_ He's grown used to saying, during the hard years when it had been next to impossible to gain authority, _I'm the servant and messenger of the gods themselves. I am the last l'Cie. The last link between the mortal and the divine._

People have short memories. Within a few short centuries they've forgotten the key rebuttal: _you are the servant of the fucking god of cactuars._

Under the Cactuar statue, dressed in impeccable black and presiding over the first festival since Hope's disappearance ( _it feels like a goddamned funeral_ ), he thinks sardonically to himself, _it's better this way._

* * *

 _Hey, Serah. Am I doing the right thing?_

She doesn't answer. She'll never look his way again, he's sure.

To make up for a family of nil and a family he's failed to save, he can only die to serve a family of all (that's left of) humankind.

The savior lands in all the commotion, flashing startling dreamlike rose-colored hair and a sword that tingles with electricity. Hope's words from nearly two centuries ago float tepidly back into his mind. Her expression is cold. His is one of anticipation.

"Ah… Lightning."

 _I've been waiting for a very long time._


	3. Last Resort

**A/N:** This is my interpretation of Ark!Hope in LR, which means... it is the real Hope without his heart (feelings) who tries, throughout the 13 days, to rediscover who he was/is fake!Serah-style (trying to imagine what the "real" Hope would feel even though he can't feel it). I've talked about it a lot with my friend TGT so... a-yup. How can you tell whether or not you're "real" if you're missing important parts of yourself? Is it possible to be jealous of the person you used to be?

* * *

 **Last Resort**

( nier automata | vague hope: cold rain )

* * *

At last, the darkness folds back upon itself, erasing the ark and her heart seamlessly; the world dies down properly, and so do you. Alone in the chaos, surrounded by ink and soft, amorphous velvet, you try to breathe before realizing you don't possess a pair of lungs anymore.

 _How much… do I have left?_

After so long utterly despising and fighting chaos with every fiber of your being, this almost strangely… feels… like home.

( _Is home a true emotion_?)

Slowly, painstakingly, thoughts float back into focus; they are ideas without wings, soul fragments without a heart. But you remember. You still remember this part.

"My name is…"

"My name… is Hope."

* * *

It gets a little easier, after a while; more things come back to you. You are not going to question _how_ – there's a lingering suspicion somewhere in all of this that you wouldn't want to recognize what you have become – but only opens your arms to embrace them, cradle them close to a sluggish consciousness that only wants to smile. There, the slow spill – the fireworks of Yusnaan, the clock tower of Luxerion… the long bridge spanning Poltae and the Temple of the Goddess, the solitary guardian that dies even as he is remade, the throne, _the throne, the form of the rose enclosed in crystal_ –

The acute pain nearly knocks imaginary-wind out of the sails of your imaginary-heart, and you feel something wet and warm on your face even as your hands have gone up to cover it and you are so giddy with happiness that your entire body is trembling. _And this –_

 _I don't have my own heart anymore, but if I get to keep this dream of it – this desperate longing, this indescribable pain – I'll continue to be human, won't I?_

* * *

The Ark is the clearest part of your memory; it's where the construction of the imaginary-heart started, after all. Abandoned by the creator in the middle of a pristine world of white, you had approached everything with the wonder and bewilderment of the first human molded from Etro's blood and left to wander the Earth.

 _Can I… see?_

The shapes – the screens – had made sense once you touched them. You remembered their brethren, the screens of what your records declared to be 400 and 500 AF and not to say the screens of Bhunivelze after, in this very room, the last time it had been filled with people. You fell into one of those settlements – chairs? – and everything is so familiar, down to the near undiscernible crackling of the machinery and the algorithms of the processors. _I've done this before. I know how to do all of this…_

Fumbling with the circuits. Things going up in flames. You pursued on, entranced and eager to please.

 _I can see deserts, oceans, cities…_

You had been so delighted to just _be_ , you didn't notice the gaping holes in every aspect of your existence until they had starved you of oxygen and left you screaming in your imaginary Ark dreams.

* * *

"Welcome home, Light-san."

She stared with an intensity that almost _burned_ , scrutinized you as if you were _wrong_ , and a cinder somewhere in your core burst into flames and died at the first eye contact, a considerably unacceptable touch of melodrama. You told her everything she needed to know, smiling easily as you recited lines and orders you didn't remember ever learning.

You made a mental note to look for her in your memory archives.

* * *

"Hope… does that mean you'll be watching the rear? You'll have my back?"

Her voice; it was just one touch forlorn, missing a breath of something you couldn't quite place. You shifted your weight in your chair, ignoring the sudden spark of recognition that had occurred in the back of your mind, a particular phrase and a particular scene that had no business cropping up as often as it did through nearly four hundred years of memories. Orphan's Cradle. Palumpolum. Academia. The Dead Dunes. The Temple of the Goddess –

 _You were important to him._

 _You are important to me._

She and they had what you had long lost, a… human heart…

 _You could tell me you couldn't hurt over Serah anymore, but that look in your eyes…_

 _It… it made me feel small._

 _It made me realize that I can only start to imagine what I had…_

Biting the last word between your lips. Trying to scratch yourself with bookshelf statues and doomsday clock hands to see if you could still bleed.

"Who am I? It's a question I don't have an answer to."

 _Lost…_

* * *

You spent more time than you were proud of watching a boy with your hair and face cling onto a young woman's baseless promise.

You spent even more time wondering whether or not that boy – that Fal'Cie-despising, self-sacrificing, and fiercely empathetic boy – would be ashamed of you for serving God.

* * *

"Light, I don't want to pry, but are you all right?"

"But, Light, try not to die, okay?"

"I suppose that's just like you. But don't let yourself get hurt, okay?"

She scoffed but appreciated. You grinned even with your brows furrowed.

Concerned assistant. Loyal partner. That was what you had always been.

(But was that what _you_ had always been?)

* * *

"So then Lightning, Hope's with you now?"

"I've missed that kid. But he would've come to see me if he could've, I'm sure. I guess this means he can't."

"I don't know the whole story, but something's keeping him away."

"He'd better come back to us someday, though. You tell him that for me."

 _Snow… I…_

 _Even if I'm not really the real Hope… I will…_

 _Let me_ **_feel_** , you beg (whisper, scream, _command_ ), and the entire ark is silent.

* * *

He (you) loved Nora and Bartholomew Estheim.

He (you) fought until your body nearly broke down to try to save the world.

He (you) would never forget the hope you gained from a hug, a promise, and a divinely tempered bond of trust.

He (you) would sooner die (or survive) than to cease to be human.

He (you) should never have been here.

He (you) loved a Lightning who would splinter herself into pieces to protect those _she_ loved, even if he (you)

 _As God_

Could never see her heart, the spark

of Lumina.

* * *

The whole Hope Estheim was brave, pure and true. You were fragmented and afraid, tainted and possessed by God –

 _Do you not also possess his soul? Do you not possess his body, all the invisible wounds under his skin, a perfect imaginary imitation of his heart?_

"Who are you?" You cried out, looking around wildly. You were alone. Lightning was down on the surface, locked in her battle against Ereshkigal. The only possible answer, even if it'd mean even the Ark was being invaded and the end was near... "The chaos?"

 _Do you love the world?_

"Yes."

 _Do you love her?_

"Yes!"

 _Do you trust them?_

Lightning had nearly finished dispatching Ereshkigal. She would return soon. You would have to – "… Always."

 _Don't forget, Hope Estheim_ , the chaos intoned, vast and passionate and terrible, _no matter how much you've lost and what you have become, your Last Resort would always be with you._

* * *

 _Last resort,_ you tell yourself in this endless abyss, cherishing the memory of Light reaching out for you in that enclosed space of the end even as you watch yourself slowly disintegrate, _is to trust in those you love under the weight of death_.

 _Because I've always trusted. Because that's why I've managed to come so far, even if it will all end here. Because that's what I want to take with me into this oblivion…_

 _I feel… human._

 _I feel… loved._

 _Even if this soul of mine would disappear and that heart of mine would crumble under the weight of Light's blade, if I had been true to myself, if I had trusted, I…_

A fading glimpse of love, full of hope and yearning.

 _Even now… I am not afraid…_

 _Though my soul may set in darkness, it will rise in perfect light;_

 _I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night._

* * *

"– This is the last soul I will save!"


	4. Cold Blood

**Cold Blood**

(nier automata | bipolar nightmare )

* * *

He stretches up on his toes to reach for that chocobo-shaped lollipop, and you're about to say no. He senses it, perceptive as his mother, and pouts. "Just one, daddy, just one!"

( _How long until you can tell him that despite all the benefits you get from your job, you cannot – as a single parent – afford to send him to the dentist three times a year?)_

"No, Dajh. You've already had one yesterday, remember? Control your sweet tooth and daddy will get you a _real_ chocobo chick."

His features light up like the radiance of the sunleth waterscape, and you wonder how you've ever denied him anything. "A reeeeeeeeaaaal chocobo chick, daddy? One that I can keep? One that I can name?" A hop, step and jump: you're gonna lose the boy if you don't run after him. "I'm going to hold you to that promise!"

* * *

You don't deserve Dajh as a son: he's too intelligent, too precious, too mature for his age, and above all too pure. The child would give flowers and toys to other boys who had pushed and bullied him in class – it feels like every other day that you'd pick him up from school only to end up yelling angrily at a bunch of other kids, and Dajh would just be standing in his corner with his little chocobo backpack, smiling serenely as he examines this animal poster and that.

"You've got to stand up for yourself one day, Dajh," you chide him one day, carefully putting on his helmet for him as the two of you shoot up into Cocoon orbit. "You can't just always sit there and take everything."

"But what about you, daddy?" Dajh asks, and you wonder if his face is only a picture of innocence, and he had truly been fathering you the entire time instead of the other way around. "Do you fight back too, daddy?"

* * *

You are not a fighting man. You know this from her death – when she had told you to give in, to simply let her go instead of spending Etro knows how much money on procedures and clinical trials you could not afford, you had wept, held her hand, made her promises, cooked her favorite food, and kissed her goodnight.

( _Promise me you'll see Dajh grow up_ , she had begged. _Promise me you'll see Dajh grow old. Promise me that you'll be the best father and mother you could be, and be there for him when I'm gone._

 _Always_ , you had murmured, squeezing her hand softly. She had smiled contentedly through the drowsiness and the pain. _I may not be a miracle worker or a hero, but I love the two of you more than anything in the world._

 _Sazh, I didn't fall in love with a hero._ Her voice had been halting but sweet. Did she die that night? The weather had been eerily but peacefully calm, and Dajh had fallen asleep in the doctor's office. _I fell in love with a man who would always bring me home.)_

* * *

(The l'Cie brand on Dajh's hand flares like the dark fine print on his mother's diagnosis paper, and all you want to do is to throw up.)

* * *

How did you lay her to rest? It was autumn and you had made sure Dajh would stay in class. There was just you, her, this coldness of the coffin wall between the two of you and the crimson red leaves falling all over your bent-over form. She was no longer that warmth you once knew. You were no longer that cheerful man who would laugh at anything and everything.

Some people could have helped you but didn't.

Some people could have saved her but didn't.

Some people had cold blood.

"The world is unfair," Dajh had nonchalantly said that morning as you dropped him off, and you had nearly choked on your drink and _demanded_ just who had thought they had the right to tell him something like that. "My homeroom teacher! I was telling her that I missed mommy, and she told me that mommy had to go somewhere but she might come be back one day if I'm good."

It would seem that the people of Cocoon just absolutely could not make up fairy tales.

* * *

(You wonder. You wonder.

Would you finally fight back against those who had taken your son from you?

If you couldn't even stand up to those people, how could you ever face Dajh or his mother again?)

* * *

(The lover taken by the goddess of death and the son flash-frozen in eternal sleep:

Do you dare

Disturb the universe?)

* * *

You run in a desperate plea to escape it all – all I've ever wanted was to be a good man, _whatever that even means_ – but there's nowhere to turn. There's never been anywhere to turn.

 _How much does the universe have to take from someone before they will just watch the world burn?_

* * *

(The firearm, despite the bullet's searing escape velocity, has always been the coldest and least intimate weapon of them all.)

* * *

The ground vibrates, and your vision revolves with it, too. There's a coppery taste in your mouth, a flame and a chill dancing in tandem within your aging veins. The girl is down on her knees, peach-colored hair dull and disheveled in the wind, shivering. Her accomplice is not with her. But her accomplice hasn't lied and taken advantage of you, either.

Dajh's bruises, fear as he was taken away by the Sanctum, the one final embrace that had been denied: a boy's stolen future, and a father's unspeakable despair. You feel the flamestrike in your bones. You can breathe a fire demon, hurl meteors in your rage, wash over the field in blood debt and plasma discharge –

 _Kill_ , the rust and heartbeat of the inside of the barrel whispers, _vanquish. Slay. Kill_.

You draw the gun. It's over. It will be over.

* * *

"My name… is Oerba Dia Vanille. I'm a l'Cie from Gran Pulse. So shoot me. For your son."

 _You think you die and that's that? You think you die and everything will be sugar and rainbows?_

Monochrome truth fragments fall bleak and silent as he closes his fingers around the trigger. Machine grease and his own blood – sticky, volatile, raw. Does the girl seek to hide in death of all things? How can one girl compete against her lost smile, flashing startlingly vivid and ghostly in this dream of a thunderstorm? His delicate child's form, scintillating in crystal yet never going to ever stretch and grow? They've both died, gone in an attempt to do something right… and…

 _You think dying has ever changed anything?_

(Crystals can't bleed, but tears and cursed bodies can. And how do we all scream.)

* * *

Their taunting laughter builds, a chorus. The darkness of Pulse gazes up at you from its frenzied and maniacal depths. At your fingertips glows finally the full power to take revenge, to bring someone down with you, to watch it all be consumed by flames.

The countdown expires.

Her pulse falls silent.

* * *

.

You are not a murderer.

You drop the gun.

* * *

.

You love this life, too,

Despite its curses and hopelessness.

* * *

.

 _Lots of things can be excused._

 _Shooting kids ain't one._


	5. Death

**Death**

( nier automata | Song of the Ancients: Atonement [vocals] )

* * *

She cannot tell what is more enticing: the spring dawn's breezes heavy with birdsong and dew, or the promise of one final heartbeat, somber and steady against the back of her eyelids. _Sleep_ , she murmurs, weaving flowers with her delicate braceleted hands and smiling soundlessly to the sun. _Sleep where all friends and family have long been lowered into their eternal rest_.

 _Sleep, so that we can all dream._

* * *

 _I'm not leaving._

 _Vanille! You have to listen to me! They want you to die! They –_

 _So what if I_ ** _want_** _to die? What if I_ ** _should_** _and_ ** _need_** _to die, Fang? What then? Haven't we caused enough suffering? Haven't we failed enough? Haven't we –_

 _It's not your fault! It's never been your fault! If anyone's ever –_

 _No one told me. But I see them. I hear them._ ** _I_** _know. You can't live and die for me, Fang. You've always done everything. Live –_

 _No! Vanille!_

* * *

The souls. They come.

The towns. The world. They come…

She walks alone to the end of the altar like a bride waiting to be given away, warm silks flowing like a river over the crystal dust in her hair. She's kissed Fang in this cathedral when the Order wasn't looking, sworn that she'd love her partner forever, always be hers, _theirs_ , all the way to the end of time. Even if the Cathedral would fall. Even if the wind of the lost would consume her from the inside out. Even if…

 _But I'm not just Oerba Dia Vanille_ , you know? She grins innocently, pulling out of the kiss as the Order puts her sister – partner – lover in chains, drags her out of the saint's view. _Oerba Dia Vanille belongs to Oerba Yun Fang._

 _Vanille the l'Cie belongs to death and God._

* * *

 _Your dreams. Can I give them back? Your smile? Your tears? I hear your craving for your mother. Don't weep over the beloved… I understand, I understand. Do you want another story? What about another myth? I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I don't know what I can –_

Sometimes the voices of the dead are calming, other times violent and seething; the Order knows how it goes – they'll send priestesses after her, restrain her as she wanders blind in the halls of the cathedral, sedate her as she shrieks from darkness that is not her own. The fall of the crystal pillar… the encroaching chaos… every year as people have to walk towards another land, every district of Luxerion and Yusnaan lost to the unforgiving ocean, all the worlds that won't ever come back, all the people –

"Saint!" A stern voice yells – a priestess? – frantically waving a fan over her face. "Remember your friends. Remember your name. You must not lose yourself to the dead!"

 _My name. My family_. Serah's sympathetic face, so young and so, so kind, listening intently to her tale in Bodhum and then twisting, so painfully, in a vision that no human can endure for years on end. Hope as a child, struggling to hold a gun, then just vanishing into the night air, disappearing without a trace –

"Do something for me, will you? Keep smiling. I – it makes me happy when you smile."

The seizing stops. She feels them let go of her, slowly letting her collapse and settle against the cool marble floor. It's dark. How long has it been? Nobody's in the church at this hour anymore. There are painted glass windows in her line of vision, pictures of Pulse and Etro serving their all-knowing Father. Are Hope and Serah in her massive crowd of voices, even now? Why can't she hear them?

Does it just mean she doesn't love them enough to pick them apart from the others?

 _I love you_ , she thinks despairingly to herself, and that's when the tears start pooling, a cold and unforgivable thing even more chilling than the stone of the Cathedral itself. The Order will let her cry. They know it means that she still remembers. _All I've ever wanted is to love all of you until I die._

* * *

The years pass even in Fang's absence. She treasures the seeing stone above everything else – without Fang's consciousness, Fang's body, Fang's bravery flowing into her veins from those calloused hands clutching her own, she feels dreadfully incomplete. Her prayers in front of Bhunivelze's altar ring hollow, as ugly as the half-Ragnarok Fang became in all those years past. But she will be enough this time, even in her deformity.

 _Smile, Fang_ , she laughs to herself behind a mural of Etro bleeding out in the first desert of the world, picking Fang's language apart as the taller woman tries to gesture around a group of bandits, _they'll never flirt with you otherwise._

"Please rise, Saint. There are twelve more couples waiting to receive your blessing."

 _A thousand years and I've never wanted to be holy._

* * *

The dead never cease; she supposes death never really ceases, either, so she buries herself in prayer, learning ancient languages and rituals that she never truly understands. _If Hope was here, this would be easier_ , she reflects miserably, drinking moodily from the cup of water left outside her chamber by the acolytes. _Or Serah and Noel. Or even Yeul herself. While watching everyone from within the crystal, Fang and I entertained ourselves by trying to track the Yeuls. Fang had laughed at me for suggesting it. But when we were as we were…_

"The people would not grieve if you do not pronounce everything perfectly, your Holiness," one priest shakes his head at her, the picture of religious compassion. "All the people want are hope and salvation. If you promise it to them, then it will become real."

 _Hope is dead and Light won't ever wake up_ , the words rise to her lips, but she swallows them. She smiles at the man, the first man to show her any kind of kindness in months, and lets him pray by her feet. "God has a merciful and human heart," she begins, and he doesn't contradict her. "And so does his Savior."

* * *

It's only later, way later, when she's sitting together with Hope again in a church in the new world that she understands the true meaning of her eidolith. They are walking together through the gallery, feeling the statues and squinting at the texts, before Hope pulls her over and points out something to her. A maiden veiled and prostrate, trying to repent – and before her, glowing all rosy and beautiful on the most glorious tree of Eden, a wreath of apples.

 _The forbidden fruit, in so many ways, is life itself._

"Is Fang Adam, then?" She jokes, elbowing him. "Is that how all of this makes sense, now?"

"You can ask her about it," he responds nonchalantly, his lips curved up in a small smile. "I certainly did not remember creating her in my image."

* * *

 _A bonfire, a village, a market. Somewhere to stop, somewhere where we'd not be noticed or recognized, somewhere where I could just buy her drink, and she a chocobo for the two of us to ride the world with. A place where I could laugh at her bad jokes. A place where she could complain about the dirt in my hair. A place where we could be human, where we could fail, where we could die and bury ourselves in leaves and snow…_

The mirage shatters, as it always does. Fang wants the Clavis. If the Clavis is destroyed – if she can't perform the Soulsong – what can they do?

"It's too late to stop, Saint," she recites, a line repeated to her by the senior priestess, who claims to have heard God. "This world is ending, and we need you to bring us to the next shore."

* * *

"Lightning thinks crystal is eternal," Lumina scoffs, raven feathers and dark boots, a Farron girl from the most retro Cocoon the Pulse girl can think of. The girl dances and jumps all around the Saint, hugs her from behind and pulls on her hair. It's strangely comforting to have visitors. It's been a while since she's seen Fang, and a bit longer since the Order's given up trying to hound up a little girl who can materialize behind bars and out of thin air. "I say, she really just needs to come here and look at you."

 _Our crystal pillar… it should have never fallen. It was supposed to be indestructible, infallible. Yet the bond between Fang and I had not been strong enough. Yet our love had cracked and given away throughout the flow of time. Yet if…_

"Don't die, Vanille," Lumina suddenly breathes by your ear, Lightning-serious and Lightning-sad and Serah's smile all intertwined together in one. "It will be fine. I promise."


	6. Highwind

**Highwind**

(nier automata | memories of dust [dynamic] )

* * *

The day the Order's train from Luxerion dumps her in the middle of the Dead Dunes, Oerba Yun Fang realizes that maybe everything is meant to be after all.

She has always been the most fatalistic of all of them – well, Vanille and her both, but Vanille has always been braver, the right kind of valor or not – and here, with chaos infusions at the edge of her vision and corrupted waves eating away what is left of the world, the oldest hag on the planet once again finds herself surrounded by old, dead things with stories.

 _Well, if I can't tell my own stories worth a damn for Vanille to listen to me, maybe she'll listen to her gods and myths_ , she sighs, sweeping up a gremlin and two skeletons – and knows that she would spend most of her time in the desert hunting for the clavis.

* * *

More than a thousand years of crystal sleep has not granted her much wisdom; what it _has_ indeed granted, however, was perspective, and an enhancement of the natural charisma that had seen her marked on Gran Pulse all those centuries ago in the first place. _My voice_ , she reflects, satisfied. _It's just as coarse as ever._

"Move your ass and abandon that time-locked room in the corner. The gods of this stupid world wait for no one."

* * *

The first night after they woke up from their second sleep, they had huddled together in the Wildlands, watching the sun set above the ruins of a city they had never truly seen. Fang had thought they would finally get to live. She had made so many plans, even planned to lure Snow out of his Patron-hole for some kind of wild adventure – yet Vanille had turned towards her, melancholy-despairing-crying, and she hadn't been prepared for the fact that _living_ with Vanille would be harder than _dying_ with her.

"Hope is gone, Fang," Vanille murmured, soft-obstinate-compassionate, and Fang couldn't help but love her, that gentle soft light that combined with her own animalistic and forward strength had made for a resolve that could hold up the world. "He tried and couldn't free us. _God_ freed us. And God has a price."

"Vanille, haven't we learned that the gods can go fuck themselves?" She argued passionately, trying to hold Vanille, hold that poor girl up so that she wouldn't drown. Vanille's eyes were already under the ocean of her tears. It was at that moment that Fang realized it was never truly about what Anima or Bhunivelze had ever wanted; it was Vanille's will to become an epitaph, and there just wasn't enough space to carve her lover's name into the same divinity.

"… I have to do it, Fang."

"… I suppose we'll have to disagree again, then."

Maybe that had been why the pillar had cracked. Maybe it was all because she had just wanted Vanille to wake and live.

* * *

Lightning could do in one day what a hundred of them could not in fifteen hundred.

Some people are god touched and Oerba Yun Fang just isn't one of them.

* * *

Once upon a time she thought Lightning was just like her – as Cocoon as she was Pulse, reveling in pulse-racing fights and flashing instinct, willing to tear down the entire sky for the sake of one person she loved more than anything in the world. Yet Lightning had abandoned that one person for a greater purpose, served a goddess that did not even exist in this plane, and gazing upon the Savior's inscrutable face now, Fang wonders if Lightning Farron was indeed more like Vanille than she had ever thought.

 _Would you need someone to try to fight to save you, too?_

She can't stop for Lightning; not when Vanille is screaming in her dreams from every single person who has ever died in the past five hundred years, not when the world is ending, and not when Lightning herself doesn't even seem like she _wants_ to be saved. Vanille, to her credit, always at least regards her with that familiar well of fondness that makes her always just want to pull the peach-head into her arms and never let the girl go. She'll continue to pick her battles. She's always picked her battles.

 _And you can't tell me Vanille's soul is not worth all the hundred million other souls she's trying desperately to save._

* * *

"Vanille…"

"… Fang?"

"… Sleep with me."

Vanille had smiled in that sanctum at Luxerion, a soft blushing spring breeze in a house of cold ritual and holy discipline. "Jeez, Fang, we'd slept together for more than a thousand years."

"You know what I mean." _Hold me once. Before you leave. Before I have to go on this terrible fucking quest to try to save you. Do it so that I still know that you love me. Do it so that I can pull it from my heart and laugh at Bhunivelze's face._ "I… I need you."

She reminisces about that night later, in the sealed bleakness of the Dead Dunes; Vanille's touch, her lingering breath, the way they kissed each other's wounds and tears clean. _Do you remember the flowers, the bonfires of old Pulse, the looks in the elders' eyes as we were chosen? Do you remember me, the way I'd call your name, the taste of me on your lips, the way I'll walk all these thorns for you, in sun or rain?_

She dreams of Vanille over cities in dust and wonders if there's an ending to this dream, if Lightning would truly rewrite it all and perhaps even defeat God. Lightning's world: probably more like Vanille's than her own. Probably full of duty and sentimentality. Probably full of bunch of useless things that keep getting everyone in trouble.

 _But it'll be a nice world. One worth living in. One worth fighting for, if Vanille wants to be in it, too._

* * *

There are things that she doesn't say, even to Lightning and Vanille. She's not sorry for her secrets: she's always had good reason, after all, and she trusts her heart with those things. Boisterous thoughts may fill up her life, but memories and family are eternally sacred.

Lightning has to investigate the unseen chaos in the Wildlands. She has an appointment with the Order and their God on the final day of the world. She turns on her boots, smirks, and walks off again.

 _I'll see all of you soon._

Between the battle roar and unflinching steel she is a daughter of the desert, yet under the moon, in solitude, even the desert is tender.


End file.
